SUMMARY: remote installation of OS 4.1.1

From: Claus Assmann (ca@idefix.informatik.uni-kiel.dbp.de)
Date: Thu Feb 28 1991 - 07:51:06 CST


Tuesday I had a question about the remote installation of Sun OS 4.1.1.:

> ... we got an error message:
> get_software_info: '/etc/ifconfig le0 mickey -trailers up 2>>/etc/install/suninstall.log' failed.
>
> After that, we found in /etc/install/suninstall.log:
> /etc/ifconfig: P^Gn^X(M-^L)^O(M-()^Gn^X^N: not found
...
> /etc/ifconfig: syntax error at line 11: `P^Gn^X(M-^L)^S' unexpected
> get_software_info: '/etc/ifconfig le0 mickey -trailers up 2>>/etc/install/suninstall.log' failed.
> failed to assign software information.

Even though I didn't get my question back yet, I got four replies,
all of them stating that we are using the wrong binary (sun3 ?).
But we have installed two other SPARCs with these tapes (directly) !

After this hint, we did some hacking (installed the miniroot in /dev/sd0b, booting as client
and examined the 'executables' (after mounting sd0b): file ifconfig: data !!).
So we copied the files from the server into the miniroot and all seemed to
work well (suninstall succeeded).
But we weren't able to reboot the system: after the initial startup messages:
...
vmunix: root on sd0a fstype 4.2
vmunix: swap on sd0b fstype spec size 14070K
vmunix: dump on sd0b fstype spec size 14056K

the computer hang (only L1-A worked).

Something must have failed during the copying of the miniroot from tape to the
server or from server to client (no idea, what :-(.

We started the installation again, but now we got on the client:
>b le() -a
Booting from: le(0,0,0) -a
got error packet: error code 1 message: file not found

In the afternoon the client startet without this error message,
but again failed to work with the miniroot.
Meanwise we got a CD-ROM from Sun, so we used this to install the new OS.
Then we compared the miniroot from the tape and the miniroot from the CD:
there were no differences !
Okay, we tried the next SPARCs: One booted well over the net and the installation
succeeded without any problem !
Another was not able to boot from ethernet (error message see above).
There seems to be a problem with our ethernet (but this doesn't occur
during normal operation !).
Now we install our remaining SPARCs directly from CD.

Many thanks to:
carlo@white.stanford.edu
Alain Brossard EPFL-SIC/SII <brossard@sasun1.epfl.SWITCH.arcom.ch>
Per Hedeland <per@erix.ericsson.se>
Badri Pillai <badri@ecrc.de>

Thanks a lot !

Claus Assmann
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Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet Kiel, Institut fuer Informatik
Preusserstr. 1 - 9 , D - 2300 Kiel 1
Phone: ++49-431-5604-57 , Fax: ++49-431-566143
EMail: ca@informatik.uni-kiel.dbp.de , ca@idefix.informatik.uni-kiel.dbp.de
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